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CLCLT.COM | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | 9

NEWS

FEATURE

WINTER IS
COMING
Water protecters at
Oceti Sakowin camp in
North Dakota brace for
cold weather, eviction
deadline
BY RYAN PITKIN

I

T WAS A half-year ago in
May that Desiree Kane found
herself laying in the grass of
the Sacred Stone Camp in North
Dakota with about 15 other people, most of
whom indigenous “water protectors” who
had gathered there for a prayer movement
aimed to peacefully resist the construction
of the now-infamous Dakota Access Pipeline.
On that May afternoon, while Kane lay
in the grass licking ice cream, a small white
puppy playfully gnawed at her bare toes. She
felt an overwhelming feeling of serenity,
tinged with the knowledge that things would
soon change drastically.
She was right.
In the next three months, violence would
escalate while police and private security
contractors would implement brutal tactics
against protesters.
In November, many people around
the country were shocked to wake up to
headlines about authorities using water
cannons on protesters in below-freezing
temperatures.
But according to Kane, the water cannons
were just one in a long list of cruel tactics she’s
seen authorities use on peaceful protesters
— also called water protectors — during her
time among the nearly 30 camps that make
up the Standing Rock site.
“You all don’t hear about the things that
happen out here,” Kane says when asked if
the water cannon tactics were the worst she
had seen. “This is not new.”
She has long since stopped worrying
about what she might face each day as
she wakes up anew at the Oceti Sakowin
camp, just outside of the Standing Rock
Reservation where she now lives in a
traditional Mongolian hut called a yurt that
was recently donated.
Kane is a member of the Miwok tribe.
She was a Creative Loafing contributor in
Charlotte before co-founding The PPL, a
10 | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | CLCLT.COM

The Oceti Sakowin Camp at night. The lights in the distance are the pipeline construction site.
grassroots home for independent media, in
the lead-up to the 2012 Democratic National
Convention. She later moved to Arizona to
produce documentaries for Vice News and
most recently lived in Denver before going
to Standing Rock Reservation in May to
help with communication training for water
protectors. She left after completing that
training, but soon answered a call to return
and has been at the camp since.
Speaking over the phone, she says she felt
it was her duty to be there in a supportive role
for the tribes whose water sources would be
affected by the construction of the pipeline,
which will travel under a nearby lake used by
the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes as
a main water source. Water protectors often
refer to the pipeline as “the black snake.”
“Being one of the first people out here,
when things started to get more serious, at a
certain point, your friends call you up and need
your help,” she says. “You can’t say, ‘No’ if you
have the privilege and capacity to do so.”
She said her first two-and-a-half months
at Standing Rock went as expected, but then

it “turned into a war zone.”
“It happened at an alarming pace. Every
time there’s an escalation on behalf of police,
I’m always alarmed and kind of surprised while
simultaneously not being surprised,” she says.
“We know as indigenous people, for hundreds
of years the United States government hasn’t
respected us or believed that we had any
rights at all, so it’s expected. But what’s always
alarming is the level in which they’re willing
to go to harm us, especially being unarmed.
We never expect to hear stories about police
smiling in people’s faces while simultaneously
shooting them with rubber bullets in their
kneecaps, or dumping water on people. It’s
really just inhuman.”
She says she and other water protectors
haven’t had a chance to register what they’ve
been through, but she’s concerned with how
the experiences will affect her later.
“I guess the only thing I’ve really lost
out here is frankly a little bit of faith in
humanity,” she says. “It’s just been awful.”
Despite the hardships, Kane continues to
get back on the horse, quite literally in one

ERIC SCHWABEL

instance early in her stay in which she hurt
her arm after being bucked from a bronco
that had just been broken from the wild
three days earlier.
Kane regrets none of her time in camp
and knows some parts of her time there, like
her time with the puppy in the grass early
in her stay, will stay with her forever — in
a good way.
There was one experience, for example,
in which two indigenous women, one a
lesbian, presented for show the musket and
flag captured during Custer’s Last Stand.
The mixed symbolism between history and
progress in that moment stuck with Kane.
“Our culture has changed a little bit in
the positive toward the LGBTQI community,
so as I was watching this, I was choked
up realizing that we’ve really come a long
way,” she says. “There’s a lot of pride in
that moment, knowing that they were never
defeated — my ancestors — so to think that
we would be defeated out here just isn’t in
the scope of our understanding.”

GARRETT AMMESMAKI

Jasmine S. LaBeau helps re-strike a teepee at the Oceti Sakowin on Nov. 15 in preparation for
the winter.

FROM CHARLOTTE, IT can feel tough to

make a difference in what’s happening 1,600
miles away at the Standing Rock camps.
Some Charlotte activists have made the trip
to North Dakota to stand in support with
water protectors, while others in the area
have donated money and needed materials.
Around Halloween, more than 1 million
Facebook users around the country used the
site to check in at Standing Rock thanks to
a viral post claiming it would help confuse
police who were targeting organizers on the
ground there. That turned out not to be true,
but did act as a symbolic show of support for
those peacefully resisting the construction
of the pipeline.
This weekend, a Charlotte woman is
hoping to unite others around the #NoDAPL
(No Dakota Access Pipeline) cause by
throwing a “healing party,” the funds from
which will go directly to those on the ground
at the Oceti Sakowin camp.
Linda Simthong, founder of School of
Jai, began planning the event after seeing
videos of water protectors being brutalized
online and on television. As School of Jai
is a holistic healing and education-based
organization in Charlotte, Simthong had
been contemplating a healing party in the
city since the Charlotte Uprising, and knew
she had a chance to get people together
around a common cause when she saw the
widespread support being expressed for the
#NoDAPL movement.
Simthong, who is originally from Laos
(“jai” is the Laotian word for heart), wants
her organization to serve as a place for people
to come for a better understanding of other
cultures they may not be connected with.

“I am a part of such different groups and
I knew it was a time for our city to unite,”
she says. “I’ve been a part of the hip-hop
community, I’ve been a part of the spoken
word community, I’ve been a part of different
communities in my Laotian community, but
there isn’t really a safe space for all of us to
come together to create, to have dialogue,
and that’s what School of Jai is about.”
While Simthong is connected in those
communities, she is not connected with the
local indigenous community, so she reached
out to make sure she would be helping
the right people. She began to get council
from a friend in Arizona who knew people
on the ground at the protest site, then
started hearing from people nearby. She
has since been in talks with the Metrolina
Native American Association as well as water
protectors at Standing Rock, who have told
her that Oceti Sakowin would be the best
camp in which to funnel funding.
Through a silent auction and a
recommended $10 donation at the door at the
upcoming fundraiser, Simthong hopes to raise
at least $1,000 for the folks at Oceti Sakowin.
Kane said people at the camp are currently
in need of gear to survive the coming cold,
but emphasized that people could also help
in ways that didn’t put a strain on their own
time or resources. She encourages people
to research what companies are funding
the Dakota Access Pipeline — Wells Fargo,
for example, is one of 17 banks directly
funding the pipeline’s construction — and
take action from there.
“People can make a huge difference by
divesting and pulling their money out of the
banks that fund the Dakota Access Pipeline,”

she says. “We vote with our money. We
have influence through our money. The
most tangible and helpful thing people
can do besides sending material support
and sponsoring indigenous organizers is to
pull their money out of the banks. Use a
credit union. There are a lot of other banks
that aren’t funding brutalization against
indigenous people.”
In the short term, however, funds and
materials are needed now at Standing Rock
reservation more than ever, and new threats
have arisen that make it unclear whether the
Oceti Sakowin camp will be around by the time
Simthong throws her party.
As folks at the camp prepared for an
oncoming blizzard, they recently faced two
eviction notices coming within days of each
other; first from the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers then from North Dakota Governor
Jack Dalrymple.
On Nov. 25, the chairman of the Standing
Rock Sioux tribe received a letter from the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stating they
would soon be closing off the land just north
of the Cannonball River — where the Oceti
Sakowin camp is located — to the public.
The camp is on disputed land, as the
government claims it’s federally owned but
leased for grazing, while the Standing Rock
Sioux point out that they own the land by
right of the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty.
The Army Corps letter states “this
decision is necessary to protect the general
public from the violent confrontations
between protesters and law enforcement”
and to “prevent death, illness, or serious
injury to inhabitants of encampments due to
the harsh North Dakota weather conditions.”
The letter says the land will be closed
on Dec. 5, leading many to speculate that
authorities would forcibly remove any water
protectors who hadn’t left by that date. On
Sunday, however the Army Corps released a
new statement stating that won’t be the case.
The corps suggested a new 41-acre “free
speech zone” south of the river for those in
the Oceti Sakowin camp to relocate to.
“The Army Corps of Engineers is
seeking a peaceful and orderly transition to
a safer location, and has no plans for forcible
removal. But those who choose to stay do so
at their own risk as emergency, fire, medical,
and law enforcement response cannot be
adequately provided in these areas,” the
statement reads. “Those who remain will be
considered unauthorized and may be subject
to citation under federal, state, or local laws.
This will reduce the risk of harm to people in
the encampments caused by the harsh North
Dakota winter conditions.”
The Dec. 5 ultimatum coincides with
plans by two veterans to deploy a force of
hundreds of veterans to the Standing Rock
reservation to join water protectors and

prevent further progress on the pipeline.
Wesley Clark Jr., and Michael Wood Jr.,
plan to arrive at the site with between 500
and 2,000 other veterans on Dec. 4 then lead
an action of peaceful resistance on Dec. 5, the
day the Oceti Sakowin camp will be officially
closed.
On Monday, Dalrymple took things a step
further, ordering the mandatory evacuation
of all water protectors on federally owned
land. The governor cited the oncoming
weather hazards and said he is taking action
for the well-being of activists.
“Winter conditions have the potential to
endanger human life, especially when they
are exposed to these conditions without
proper shelter, dwellings, or sanitation for
prolonged periods of time,” Dalrymple wrote
in the order.
“It is the responsibility of the state to
assist citizens and visitors to North Dakota
in addressing the emergencies, disasters, and
other hardships that may face the state, its
citizens and visitors, to include issuance of
orders in the best interest of public safety.”
As of CL’s print deadline, Dalrymple
had not specified how he planned to carry
out the order, which states that no state
agencies, emergency service officials or
nongovernmental organizations will be
offering emergency provisions in the
evacutation area.
Spokespeople for the Standing Rock
Sioux have pointed out the hypcorisy of
implying that authorities are worried
about the water protectors’ well-being after
spending weeks blasting them with water
cannons in below-freezing temperatures.
The protesters have stood firm in stating
they will remain where they are as fears grow
of a forced removal taking place during harsh
winter conditions in the upcoming weekend.
“We have lived for generations in this
setting. That is our camp. We will continue
to provide for our people there,” Standing
Rock Sioux spokesperson Phyllis Young said
at a press conference Monday following the
governor’s order. “This is Lakota territory.
This is treaty territory, and no one else has
jurisdiction there.”
It can be hard to reach Kane at the Oceti
Sakowin camp, as her already-busy camp
life has only accelerated in preparation for
the oncoming storm. On Monday, following
news of the Army Corps ultimatum and
preceding the governor’s evacuation order, I
reached out through text message to get her
thoughtson the impending deadline.
Her answer, while blunt, showed that
the resolve she showed during our original
conversation a few days before hadn’t left
her or her campmates.
Her reply read, “We aren’t leaving 1851
treaty land until the black snake is dead.”
RPITKIN@CLCLT.COM

CLCLT.COM | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | 11

VIEWS

THE QUERY

NEWS

THANKS FOR SOMETHING, 2016
LGBTQ community should see year of struggle as
opportunity to grow
AS THANKSGIVING WEEKEND

came and went, I found myself reflecting
on this year. No doubt, 2016 has been
nothing short of a tumultuous, challenging
journey for LGBTQ Charlotteans and North
Carolinians — indeed, for the entire national
and global community.
After this year’s election, as we stare
down the onslaught of a Trump presidency
and all the dangers it represents, it’s natural
for many of us to feel a deep, disappointing
and, perhaps even depressingly negative
outlook on what comes next. But through
adversity here in Charlotte and North
Carolina, we’ve found opportunity and new
lessons — each with their own blessings and
opportunities for our future.
As we enter the holiday season and with
a new year approaching, I wanted to take
the time to pause and reflect on our journey
this year, give thanks where necessary
and offer glimpses of hope for
the soon-to-be new year we’ll
share together next month.

She hasn’t always been perfect; many of us
aren’t. I’m thankful, however, for Roberts’
leadership on the ordinance and against HB2,
as well as her presence during the Charlotte
Uprising. Lord only knows how both of those
situations would have been handled by a less
progressive, less visionary mayor.

CENTERING TRANS VOICES

The city’s ordinance battle and the
resulting political and economic turmoil caused
by House Bill 2 have placed the transgender
community center-stage in the city and state’s
political theatre. A mere handful of years ago,
it would have been unimaginable to think
that transgender rights and visibility would
have the power to shape and shift the local
political landscape and even be a main issue
in a gubernatorial race. More important,
however, are the many lessons our own LGBTQ
community has been able to learn from
the new, front-and-center fight
over full LGB and T equality.
Local and statewide
LGBTQ organizations have
THE RIGHT LEADER
stepped up their outreach
and inclusion efforts
FOR THE RIGHT TIME
for the transgender
Just a little over a
community. Though still
year ago, I had my own
not perfect, cisgender
doubts about now-Mayor
community leaders —
Jennifer Roberts. Much
myself included — are
of my doubt stemmed
beginning to learn more
from her past positions on
MATT COMER
about what it means to be an
a range of social justice issues.
ally and friend to the transgender
I even personally endorsed
community, especially trans people of
her opponent, Dan Clodfelter.
color, who find themselves facing the highest
Throughout this year, however, Roberts has
risks of unemployment, health concerns,
been the right leader for the right time here
violence and more.
in Charlotte.
I’m thankful for the people in my own
Starting
with
her
unwavering
life who have helped me to learn new lessons
commitment to LGBTQ equality, Roberts’
this year, and I’m thankful for the trans
steadfast support for the city’s LGBTQleaders who have used their voices to rise up
inclusive non-discrimination ordinance
to give power and visibility to a community
put her at odds with local business leaders,
local conservatives — even some among
often ignored and even maligned among
her own party — and a hostile, anti-queer
those who should be friends.
state legislature and governor. At times,
All-in-all, I believe we’ll look back on
it seemed Roberts, with the support of a
2016 as a harrowing time. A time for rising
solid core of City Council, might be forced
to and beyond challenge. A time of radical
to bend under the weight of so many heavy
transformation and growth. No matter how
hitters calling for compromise (I’m staring
difficult it is to see when one is in the midst
disappointingly at you, Charlotte Chamber).
of transformation, there are brilliant silver
But Roberts never bowed, even when a
— no, rainbow — linings in the dark clouds
potential ordinance repeal vote was rumored
which have by-and-large defined this year.
to come before City Council.
We’ll soon celebrate a new year. With it,
During the Charlotte Uprising, prompted
let us center what is necessary in our lives,
by the police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott,
our communities, our movements, city, state
Roberts took even more personal and political
and world. Happy holidays and new year,
blows. Roberts probably has a long list of
y’all!
things she might have done or said differently.
BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM
12 | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | CLCLT.COM

BLOTTER

BY RYAN PITKIN

FUEL THE FIRE Police followed up on a
call from the Charlotte Fire Department last
week after a fire in a west Charlotte home
was found to be arson. After fire crews put
out the flames, they found that someone had
lit up a pile of phone books for warmth in the
house’s living room, doing $300 in damage.
The incident gave phone book companies a
reason to celebrate, as they were happy to
hear that their product could still be used for
something.
I LOVE LAMP Police responded to a
Goodwill store on Wilkinson Boulevard after
someone thought if they volunteered for a
little work there they could have anything
they wanted. An employee at the store told
police that someone showed up with another
person one afternoon to help them load a
heavy piece of furniture onto the dock where
you can put donations. When the helper
finished, they began to peruse the rest of the
dock to see what else was being donated that
day. They liked what they saw apparently,
and ended up leaving with a lamp, a pitcher
and a dress.

NEED A RAISE A woman was sitting at

the reception desk at her job last week,
probably hoping for something to happen
while she waited for the four-day weekend
to start, when something very unfortunate
happened. The woman told police that she
looked up at the glass doors at the front of
her company’s business and noticed a man
standing on the other side masturbating.
The man apparently didn’t want to come in,
though, and ran off at the sight of the victim
picking up her phone.

NOT YOUR STORAGE UNIT A 23-year-

old woman returned to her old apartment
last week to find that her former roommate
wasn’t taking her shit, literally. The woman
said she moved out in late October and
returned a month later to pick up a few things
she had left behind, and was informed that
her stuff was no longer there. The woman
told officers that her former roommate told
her they had simply thrown her laptop,
printer, mixer, kitchen supplies, bedframe,
night stand and hookah into the dumpster
after she had moved. Since she waited a
month, she couldn’t recover them from the
dumpster.

GET THAT CREAM Management at Phat

Burrito in South End found out that one
of their employees was stealing from them
recently, despite their every effort to create
alibis through their work schedule. On a
Friday, an employee noticed that a bunch of
money was missing from the register. While
discussing with management, this employee
stated that one of their coworkers had been
there that day, despite it being their day

off. On Sunday, the coworker came back.
on their vacay day again, but this time the
other folks who were actually working hard
for their money watched them closely. They
witnessed the freeloader go into the cash
register and take money out shortly before
leaving. Altogether, the suspect is believed to
have stolen $2,284.

FAMILY MATTERS A young girl who

attends McClintock Middle School may have
led her brother back into trouble last week,
but she’ll surely be remembered for the
rest of her school career as someone who
is not to be messed with. According to the
report, the girl’s brother escorted her to the
bus stop one day last week to prevent any
confrontation that was apparently possible
between his sister and other students. So
far, sounds like a good brother. However, the
man brought a gun and openly displayed it to
those at the bus stop as a way to intimidate
them. Since he was a grown man at a verified
CMS bus stop in attendance with young
students gathered there for school-related
reasons and, oh yeah, a convicted felon, he’s
now looking at some serious charges.

BOWLED OVER A thief in the night struck

at an apartment complex in South End last
night and all they were able to gain was two
big balls. It must’ve been a hard getaway,
because the only things listed as stolen in
the incident was a bowling bag holding two
bowling shoes and two balls. That’s going to
make for a tough walk to 10 Park Lanes.

UNLOADED Employees of tow truck

companies deal with angry assholes on a
normal basis, so scaring them can be tough.
One woman who works at an east Charlotte
tow company wasn’t having it last week
when someone tried to intimidate her at
her work. The woman later told police that a
person looking for their car simply came into
the office and placed an empty gun holster
on the desk before asking if his car was there.
The 35-year-old woman called police, so now
the man has assault by intimidation charges
to go with his tow fees.

SCAMS A 35-year-old woman should have
seen the red flags last week as soon as the
words “iTunes gift cards” became involved
with a deal for an apartment that she
had found for rent online. The apartment
“leasee” told the woman to buy $500 worth
of iTunes cards and send them images of the
front and back. They then cut off contact
and, surprise, the balance on the cards
disappeared. Another woman in Dilworth
gave $5,000 to someone she met in a coffee
house in August who promised to invest in a
house and flip it, then give her a large return.
Another surprise: the flipper has now cut off
all contact.

NEWS

L cal

NEWS OF THE WEIRD

Crafts & Culture
BY CHUCK SHEPHERD

apparently survived.

FUTURE OF TRAVEL Australian aviator
David Mayman has promised investors that
his personal jet packs will hit the market by
mid-2017, though early adopters will pay
about $250,000 for one, to fly a person at up to
60 mph for 10 minutes. The JB-10, developed
by Mayman and designer Nelson Tyler, has
made about 400 test runs in Monaco and
over downtown London and New York City,
but the partners realize that ultimate success
will require that the fuel tanks be downsized
so that the craft can be powered electrically
— and thus seek crowdfunding both for that
model and a larger one to accommodate the
Pentagon’s Special Operations Command
tactical needs.

THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT (1)
In a retail market long dominated by priests,
“nonsectarian” funeral eulogizers now offer
to give individually tailored remembrances
of the deceased for a fee, according to an
October report by a New York Post reporter
who interviewed two local “celebrants,” who
cited the declining appeal of “prayers.” (2) The
British retailer ASOS announced in August
that 3-foot-long clip-on dinosaur tails had
sold out in one of its two models, although
New York magazine, which reported it in the
U.S., was, for obvious reasons, baffled about
why.

WILD LIFE The state agency Colorado Parks

and Wildlife filed 21 criminal charges in
October against the Squirrel Creek Wildlife
Rescue center in Littleton, alleging that
some of the orphaned and rehabbing animals
Kendall Seifert houses are not being kept
according to the state’s strict standards —
and that Seifert’s 15-year-old center is also
home to his popular swingers’ club Scarlet
Ranch, featuring weekend sex parties. One
of the criminal charges suggests that rescue
animals could be stressed by gazing at activity
in the ranch’s bar area. Seifert said he will
challenge the charges out of fear that many
of the raccoons, foxes, song birds, coyotes,
skunks, rabbits and squirrels he would have
to relinquish would not find suitable facilities
elsewhere.

FIGHT CLUB In St. Paul, Minnesota, a
25-year-old woman told police on Nov. 3
that she was involuntarily roughed up several
hours after being voluntarily roughed up at
Arnellia’s Bar’s weekly “Smack Fest,” in which
female patrons competitively slap each other’s
faces for three “rounds” under strict house
rules. The woman said she spoke amicably
with her opponent, but by closing time, the
opponent and several friends, including men,
punched and kicked her outside the bar. In
other slapping news, a 71-year-old woman
died in Lewes, England, in November while
participating in a Chinese healing seminar
that emphasizes being slapped repeatedly to
rid the body of poisoned blood and toxins.
The “healer,” Hongshi Xiao, charges clients
around $900 to beat what he calls the “sha”
out of them.
KARMIC REVENGE In November, in a

remote area of Oregon’s Maury Mountains,
a 69-year-old man killed an elk and dragged
the carcass behind his off-road vehicle up a
hill. According to the Crook County Sheriff’s
office, the vehicle suddenly flipped over
backward, and the man landed on, and was
impaled by, the elk’s antlers. Fellow hunters
summoned a helicopter, and the man has

THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS Brittany

Maynard, then 29, became “the face of the
Right to Die movement” in 2014, according
to a New York Post column, when she chose
a legal physician-assisted suicide rather than
awaiting the growth of her terminal brain
tumor. In October, terminally ill California
mother Stephanie Packer hoped to be “the
face of the Right to Live movement” after
revealing that her insurance company denied
coverage for a drug that could extend her
life — but at the same time disclosed that her
suicide drugs are covered, and even disclosed
her co-pay ($1.20).

MEDICAL MARVELS Margaret Boemer’s
baby LynLee was “born” twice. In an October
Texas Children’s Hospital interview, doctors
described how the need to rid Boemer’s fetus
of a rapidly growing tumor required them, at
Boemer’s 23rd week of pregnancy, to remove
the fetus completely from the uterus until
it was “hanging out in the air” so that they
could cut away the tumor and then reposition
the fetus into the uterus. LynLee was “born”
again by C-section 13 weeks later.
SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED San Francisco

State University researchers revealed in
April that no fungi or fecal bacteria were
found on the seats of the city’s bus line
or rapid transit trains, unlike their findings
in 2011 before officials adopted easier-toclean seats, but that a “rare” and “unusual”
strain, called Pigmentiphaga was found —
previously associated only with South Korean
wastewater and the South China Sea. The
city’s Department of Health said, of course,
not to worry.

PERSPECTIVE A high-level policy document
released by the Chinese government in
September detailed plans to use technology to
monitor citizen behavior to such a degree that
each person would receive a “social credit”
score — similar to a FICO score in the U.S. but
covering a range of conduct beyond financial
— that would be the basis for allotting perks
such as government support in starting
businesses and whether parents’ children are

eligible for the best schools. “(K)eeping trust
is glorious,” according to the document, and
“good” behavior promotes a “harmonious
socialist society.”

ARKANSAS CHIC Kristi Goss, 43, an

assistant to a Garland County, Arkansas,
judge, was arrested in October and charged
with stealing nearly $200,000 in public
funds, which she used to buy such things as a
tuxedo for her dog, sequined throw pillows, a
“diamond bracelet” retailing for $128 and, of
course, Arkansas Razorback football tickets.

THE ARISTOCRATS! (1) Motorist Kurt
Jenkins, 56, was arrested in November in
Boynton Beach, Florida, after a pedestrian
said Jenkins, naked, motioned him to his car
to take a look. The pedestrian said there were
children in the area — and also that Jenkins
appeared to have wires running from his
genitals to an unidentified “electrical device.”
(2) Among a stash of pornography found
recently on the computer of Michael Ward,
70, were photos of humans having some sort
of sex with “horses, dogs, (an) octopus and
(an) eel,” according to a report of England’s
Chelmsford Crown Court proceedings. A
pre-sentencing order forbade Ward to have
contact with children under 16, but was silent
about possible contact with fish or mollusks.

THE PASSING PARADE (1) At press time,

“Bugs Bunny” and “Pink Panther” were on trial
in St. Catharines, Ontario, on aggravatedassault charges from a Halloween 2015 bar
fight in which “Dracula’s” ear was severely
slashed with a broken bottle. “There was a
lot of blood,” said a witness (the blood was
coming from Dracula, not being sucked out
by Dracula). Update: The judge cleared Bugs,
but was still deliberating on Panther. (2) The
tardigrade is an ugly micro-organism that is
perhaps the sturdiest animal on Earth, able to
endure otherwise-impossible living conditions
and, thanks to gene sequencing, known to be
composed of DNA not seen elsewhere. A
Japanese company recently began selling an
oversized, cuddlable tardigrade toy “plushie”
authenticated by science’s leading tardigrade
authority, professor Kazuharu Arakawa of
Keio University.

NOTW CLASSIC (January 2013) The
usual 20,000 or so visitors every year to
Belgium’s 30-acre Verbeke Foundation art
park are allowed to reserve a night inside the
feature attraction: a 20-foot-long, 6-foot-high
polyester replica of a human colon created by
Dutch designer Joep Van Lieshout. The area at
the end of the structure gives the installation
its formal name, the Hotel CasAnus. The
facility, though “cramped,” according to one
prominent review, features heating, showers
and double beds, and rents for the equivalent
of about $150 a night (the rate in 2012).

Sat • Dec 10th • 2-6pm
3000 S. Tryon St.

LOCAL VENDORS
A BAO TIME
FOOD TRUCK
NEW BEER &
BOOCH RELEASE
ACOUSTIC MUSIC
CORNHOLE
TOURNAMENT

cheese, eggs, milk and a few
other simple seasonings would
be enough to keep humans salivating for
centuries?
Macaroni and cheese is serious business
here in the South, and discussing the rich
iconic dish this close to the holidays is a
sure way to either make someone’s mouth
14 | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | CLCLT.COM

water, start a great conversation or start a
big argument about the best way to make it.
While no one knows exactly who made
the very first pan of ooey gooey deliciousness
that has decorated tables across this country
for generations, the first recipe for macaroni
and cheese is believed to have originated
somewhere in Italy. The dish was further
popularized when president Thomas

Jefferson introduced it to the U.S. in 1789
after a trip to Naples.
Wherever it started, one thing is for sure,
macaroni and cheese is holding steady atop
the list of America’s most popular comfort
foods with no signs of falling. According to
mymacaroniandcheeseinfo.com the dish is so
popular that food giant Kraft sells over one
million boxes of it each day and in any given

week over half the children in the U.S. will
consume at least one serving of the popular
dish. Crayola even named an orangish-yellow
crayon after macaroni and cheese just so you
know the love is totally real.
On December 3, Charlotte will pay
homage to the popular dish at the already
sold out Macaroni and Cheese Festival,
taking place at Sugar Creek Brewery. All

Lockhart: My secret is no eggs and only
fresh pure ingredients and seasonings and I
never boil my noodles in water. I can’t give
away any other details, all I can tell you is
that my family and friends go crazy for it
every time I make it.

MATTHEW SAUNDERS, RETAIL
MANAGER

The great debate is between the
homemade kind or the boxed kind. Help
us decide which one reigns supreme.
Saunders: I’ll eat both the boxed or
homemade kind. For me,
the main
determining factor is the number of people
I’m cooking for. If I’m cooking for a large

group I go homemade with 4 different
cheeses. If it’s just for me, my girlfriend and
my 3-year old son I’m using the boxed kind
all day. If my son is cool with it then so am I
and he like both kinds so its all good!
BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM

Mac ‘n’ cheese from Cuzzo’s Cuisine.
these great macaroni and cheese facts got us
here at CL wondering just what goes into a
great pan of macaroni and cheese and what
some folks’ favorite recipes and techniques
are. So we stepped out into the city to get
a few local residents’ points of view on the
famous dish.

NAPPY CHEF, PROFESSIONAL CHEF

Creative Loafing: We keep hearing
about your Jerk Chicken Macaroni and
Cheese Au Fromage, and how spicy it is.
What makes your version of the dish so
special?
Nappy Chef: My mac and cheese is
inspired by my love of Carribean food and
traditional baked macaroni and cheese. What
makes my version so good is the creativity of
the dish and the different flavors that you
taste in every bite. The spices I use, like
ground mustard and fresh jalepenos, give my
mac its unique taste.

CHEF D, CUZZO’S CUISINE FOOD
TRUCK

Locals swear by your lobster
macaroni and cheese but let’s be honest,
do you still like the regular kind?
Chef D: Heck yeah, I still like the regular
kind! Where do you think the lobster mac
and cheese recipe comes from? It comes from
my regular mac and cheese and the secret
to that is simple, always use more than one

type of cheese, keep it moist and creamy and
season it well with salt and pepper. I always
go for the crust on the corners and we all
know the burnt part is the best!

NICOLE BANKS, PROPERTY MANAGER

What’s your best macaroni and
cheese memory?
Banks: My aunt Ellen always made the
best macaroni and cheese. No professional
chef can touch it. I was so happy when my
kids finally became old enough to enjoy it
too. When I think of the holidays I literally
think of enjoying her left over macaroni and
cheese for days.

Prix-Fixe
Christmas Menu

ANDRE POOLE, PARTY PROMOTER/
JOHNSON & WALES CULINARY GRAD

We’ve heard a lot of tips for good
macaroni and cheese, but what are some
ways to ruin the dish?
Poole: Over cooking the pasta is a
definite no. Not adding enough seasoning
is just as bad and burning it and drying it
out are the worst. I treat my macaroni and
cheese the same way I treat my parties. The
secret ingredient is love. You’ve got to treat
your food like a baby. Give that baby all the
love it needs!

a culinary rite of fall. To not
eat them as the leaves fly would
b e
to deny the intersecting realities of
time, place and flavor. Forgoing the roasted
roots would be as unthinkable as not serving
cake at a birthday party. And like making
a cake, roasting roots is more of a general
approach than a singular recipe.
Roasted roots are the quintessential side
dish, served alongside the roast beast or
whatever else comes out of the kitchen this
time of year. They can be the main event
as well, and you won’t feel deprived. Today,
I’m going to focus on a dish that builds on
roasted roots, using them as an ingredient.
This dish, Roasted Root Mayonnaise,
can itself be used as an ingredient in yet
another finished dish: Roasted Root Falafel.
There is no limit to the amount of dishes
and meta-dishes that can be prepared from a
core of roasted roots. So let’s start with some
roasted root basics.
I shy away from using turnips and
rutabagas, as they can be too spicy. Onions
are too watery, and beets make everything
purple. So I stick with carrots, potatoes,
squash and garlic. If celery root — aka
celeriac — is available, I’ll use that too.
Many people choose to add to the work by
peeling their root veggies first, while others
will take the opportunity to wax “healthierthan-thou” about all of the nutrients that
are being thrown away with the skins. The
truth varies by vegetable. The skin of a carrot
is hardly any different from its interior, so
by peeling carrots you are basically throwing
away carrot. Potato skins, on the other hand,
are more nutrient-dense than the tuber’s
interior. Ditching that skin means losing 90
percent of the potato’s iron content, half its
fiber and significant amounts of calcium,
potassium, magnesium and vitamin B6. As
for winter squash, our honorable root, the
skin of every variety is edible. It just depends
how you feel about extra fiber. In all of today’s
recipes, leaving the skin on is preferable. It
adds a pleasing chewiness to whatever recipe
16 | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | CLCLT.COM

ARI LEVAUX

Roasted root mayo
is your final destination.
To ensure even cooking, the roots must
be sliced into consistent shapes. If some
pieces are thick while others are thin, the
thin pieces will start to burn before the thick
pieces are cooked through. For snack-style
eating, I thin-slice my roots so they bake
into crispy oven chips. For a side dish to
accompany, say, the roast beast, I leave the
roots chunky, about a half-inch thick. The
same goes for roasted root mayonnaise: you
want the pieces on the chunky side, so there
is a creamy interior with which to work.
To make roasted roots, toss your sliced
roots in olive oil, and then mix in some garlic
powder, black pepper and salt. Spread them
on a tray and cook at 350, stirring occasionally,
until they are done. About an hour. If you want
to cook hotter and faster, you’ll have to stir
more often in order to prevent burning.

ROASTED ROOT MAYONNAISE

There is currently a legal battle brewing
over the exact definition of mayonnaise, as
part of the mayonnaise and egg industries

pushing back against the success of egg-free,
vegan versions of this beloved condiment.
For our purposes, mayonnaise is a creamy
condiment that can be dolloped and spread.
Years before vegan mayonnaise was
sold in jars, I learned the ways of vegetablebased mayonnaise from a vegan chef in the
Brazilian interior. She made a potato salad
that was held together by what she called
“carrot mayonnaise.” Unlike the usual lily white
mortar that bonds and lubricates potato salad,
her carrot mayonnaise, in its bright orange
glory, was little more than steamed carrots that
had been whizzed with oil in a food processor.
Slice your roots to about a half-inch,
and roast them. When cooked to your
satisfaction, allow them to cool. Put a halfcup of olive oil in a food processor, along
with a small clove of garlic. With the blade
running, add the roots, a few at a time, to
the vortex. Add more olive oil as necessary to
keep the vortex going. Season with salt, and
if desired, other herbs or spices-anything
from Herbs de Provence to Berbere powder
will work. For an even more rustic approach,

skip the food processor and just mash your
roots together. And why not add some butter
while you’re at it?
Serve your roasted root mayo or mash
with anything. It’s a spread, a pile of
vegetables, a gravy sponge, or a base in your
bowl onto which more food can be piled.
And if it ends up being the only thing in your
bowl, you’ll be just fine.
I recently made a batch of roasted root
mayo that was too heavy on the raw garlic, so
I decided to cook it again, in order to mellow
the garlic edge. I patted my roasted root
mayo into balls and baked them at 350 until
they were crispy.
I had, at that point, made a derivative
of roasted root mayo, which was itself a
derivative of roasted roots. I christened this
twice-baked dish roasted root falafel balls,
and served them, floating like croutons, in a
simple bowl of tomato soup.

FOOD

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WS

Where do you see the coffee shop in
five or 10 years?
Hopefully still supporting the community
in every aspect and facet, like what we’re
doing right now. We’re working on becoming
more and more involved in the community.
We’ve done some movie screenings for local
North Carolina artists and we have different
artwork featured in Coco & the Director.
And just becoming that local neighborhood
hangout that Charlotte doesn’t really have in
a coffee shop.

NEW VAPORIUM AND LOUNGE

Davis Lake
Pk

What does Coco & the Director have
to offer that sets it apart?
I think the array of different things we
have to offer. Everything is local from the
coffee to the pastries we get from our local
partner we get delivered every morning.
We want a place for Charlotte artists to
showcase what they have. What I think
that differentiates us from other local coffee
shops is that we have the stadium seating
which is awesome, you can plug in. We want
you to come in and bring a laptop and you
can sit there as long as you want. We have
people that do interviews, do meetings, we
have the collaborative space. We have a lot of
different options for you to come in, plug in
and work away. Or come in and unplug and
unwind. We have free wifi, we have outlets
all over the place so you can plug in and do
your thing.

NOW OPEN!

ville Rd

Creative Loafing: What’s Coco & the
Director’s mission?
Sean Potter: Our mission from day one
has been all geared toward the community
and it’s paired in the coffee that we serve, the
artists that we work with and the chalkboard
menus that we have. So everything that we
have is geared to helping out the community
and making sure that every decision we
made was very focused toward making the
community a better place. Us as a company,
being owned and operated by Marriott,
we definitely could’ve gotten something

cheaper, like the Starbucks of the world or
the World Cups of the world, and those are
great in their own right but what we really
wanted to do was help out the little people.
We wanted to help the guy out that typically
can’t get into a Marriott hotel — which is
the local roaster. And everything we did was
geared toward showcasing what Charlotte
has to offer and that’s how we made our
decisions.

Old States

cooperation. These are few of the words
that inspired the founding of Coco & the
Director. They also lend themselves to
the concept behind Coco: people working
together in a space meant to foster creativity
and productivity while also being a space to
relax and recharge.
“Director,” on the other hand, is for the
individual as your time there is directed by
you. Need to plug in and work? Coco & the
Director’s stadium seating and seemingly
ubiquitous outlets allow visitors to work
everywhere and anywhere in the cozy coffee
shop.
Coco & the Director sources its beans
from around the world based on availability
and are picked and roasted by the shop’s
local bean roaster, Forte Legato. As for the
food, if it’s not made fresh in-house like the
sandwich of the day, it’s delivered fresh every
morning from Renaissance Patisserie from
South End.
In addition to sourcing from fair-trade
coffee bean farmers, Coco & the Director
supports the community through inviting
artists into its space to showcase work,
promote products and even play music.
Creative Loafing talked with Sean Potter,
the director of eat and drink at Coco &
the Director, to discuss the shop’s focus on
supporting the Charlotte community in its
mission.

Sean Potter of Coco & The Director

Old States
ville Rd

COLLABORATION, COMMUNITY,
CONNECTION, camaraderie and

DISHING FRESH
FOOD AND BEVERAGE
NEWS WEEKLY.

CLCLT.COM | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | 17

THURSDAY

1

SHARON DOWELL STUDIO
SALE
What: Sharon Dowell is one of
Charlotte’s most prominent artists
for good reason. Her artwork —
mostly figurative and of landscapes
— pops. Bridges and rural spots
get a colorful new life on canvas
when Dowell uses them as a muse.
She was recently comissioned to
do a large mural for UNC-Charlotte
Center City. Check out her works
during this sale and buy a piece to
take home.
When: 6 p.m.-10 p.m.
Where: C3 Lab,
2525 Distribution St.
More: Free admission. 980-3495803. c3-lab.com.
— ANITA OVERCASH

18 | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | CLCLT.COM

THURSDAY

THINGS TO DO

TOP
TEN

The Hot Sardines
MONDAY

FRIDAY

1

FRIDAY

2

2

HOLLY AND TINSEL

JAREKUS SINGLETON

What: Lake Norman’s Davidson
Community Players are sprucing
things up this year with Holly and
Tinsel. When two families end up
stranded at a diner due to a snow
storm, they meet a waitress and
a cook who remind them of the
true meaning of Christmas. This
new work was written exclusively
for DCP audiences. Sounds like
greasiness and gratitude all in one.

What: Now in his early 30s, blues
guitar slinger Jarekus Singleton is
one of those child prodigies who
got started at an early age and
has grown by leaps and bounds
beyond his years. He started off
playing gospel in a church, was
influenced by blues greats like
B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughn,
listened to hip-hop and it’s now
all been fused together in his own
style as he puts his stamp on the
genre.

What: Sure, playing gigs with
The Rolling Stones and Lenny
Kravitz has its obvious perks, but
being a sideman isn’t the same
as unleashing your inner creative
demons. Saxophonist Karl Denson’s
toured with fine musicians, but his
own project is where he gets to
stretch his wings. With guitarist
Jimmy Herring (Widespread Panic)
on the bill, one can only hope for
some stellar collaborations.

What: Here’s your local bite of
twangy, folk-layered Americana at
its finest. The duo, featuring Perry
Fowler (vocals, guitar, harmonica)
and Mark Baran (bass, vocals, kick
drum and banjo), released a debut
album in 2013 and will release a
sophomore effort in early 2017.
That being said, they’re ready
to give listeners a sample of the
rootsy, foot-stomping vibes. With
Greensboro-based Rinaldi Flying
Circus and Carolina Gator Gumbo.

FOURTH WARD HOLIDAY
HOME TOUR
What: This three-day, Fourth
Ward holiday home tour can be
filed under “something different”
to do this season. The event
features Victorian homes and chic
condominiums alongside cultural
spots all decorated for the holidays.
There are also food, beer and
cocktail samples along the way,
caroling performances and horsedrawn carriage rides.

What: This annual Germanstyle Christmas market at Old
Mecklenburg Brewery kicks off
the weekend of Dec. 2-3. Go
check out an assortment of local
vendors selling gifts and edibles.
While you’re there, don’t forget to
get a glass of Gluhwein — a hot,
spiced red wine — or try one of
the brewery’s two seasonal beers,
including the Dunkel and Yule
Bock.

HEALING ALL RELATIONS:
BENEFIT FUNDRAISER FOR
STANDING ROCK
What: This benefit show aims to
raise money for, and shed light
on, a worthy cause. If you aren’t
already aware of what’s going
on at Standing Rock and the
#NODAPL movement, flip on over
to our News section. This event will
feature yoga, dancing and an open
mic session. Justin Aswell, Swan
Mega and DJ L.ohh will be holding
down the musical end. Be there.
When: 2 p.m.
Where: Studio 1212, 1212 E. 10th St.
More: $10 suggested
donation. facebook.com/
events/321359151580480/
— HAHNE

TUESDAY

6

THE HOT SARDINES

DAVE DONDERO

What: This New York-based jazz
band is known for adding its own
interesting tinge of sounds —
especially when all the extra brass
kicks in — to holiday classics. As
they state in their website, “Fueled
by the belief that classic jazz
feeds the heart and soul, the Hot
Sardines are on a mission to make
old sounds new again and prove
that joyful music can bring people
together in a disconnected world.”

What: Dave Dondero has been
releasing folk tunes for over a
decade, after his stint with Clemson,
South Carolina based Sunbrain. His
newest release, With Love, is all too
familiar for folks who heard 2013’s
This Guitar. Released on Nov. 4, the
album features the song “Boxer’s
Fracture,” written after 2012’s
horrific movie theater shootings
Aurora, Colorado and in response to
gun enthusiasts. With Blanket Fort,
Chris Thomas.

HEY, HEY,
WE’RE THE
HERDMANS
Review of Children’s
Theatre of Charlotte’s
The Best Christmas
Pageant Ever: The
Musical
BY PERRY TANNENBAUM

S

O THE HOLIDAYS are
here, and we all know the live
entertainment drill: inevitable
revivals of A Christmas Carol, Nutcracker,
and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever plus a
few fresh novelties to liven the mix. This
year, one of the novelties is also one of the
inevitables. For while it’s possible to see
the customary stage adaptation of Barbara
Robinson’s Yuletide favorite at Matthews
Playhouse starting on Thursday, Children’s
Theatre of Charlotte unveiled the world
premiere of The Best Christmas Pageant
Ever: The Musical on Black Friday.
Robinson adapted her 1971 novel for
the Seattle Children’s Theatre in 1982,
and the proliferation of productions across
America has arguably made the playscript
more beloved than the book. So the team of
Johanna Beecham and Malcolm Hilgartner,
adding their lyrics and musical score, did the
prudent thing in adapting Robinson’s stage
version.
Nearly 34 years to the day since the story
succeeded in Seattle, a whole generation
of parents who saw Best Christmas Pageant
onstage as children are bringing their
offspring to ImaginOn to see The Musical.
Our Children’s Theatre, which has grown to
national renown during those intervening
years, had to add five performances to the
run before opening night — a tribute to their
prestige as well as the bankable title.
Turns out that the Robinsons, the
playwright (who died in 2013) and her
daughters, were pretty prudent themselves
in choosing Beecham and Hiltgartner. They
seem to know what can be enlarged to
musical proportions and how to get the job
done. I’d also say that Best Christmas Pageant
is easier to swallow than A Christmas Carol
was when it morphed into Scrooge.
20 | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | CLCLT.COM

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever: The Musical runs through Dec. 23 at ImaginOn.
Big crowd scenes can be magnified most
easily from stage to musical dimensions,
but A Christmas Carol doesn’t really abound
with them. Scrooge’s workplace and
Cratchit’s home aren’t bustling places, and
London is a cold, lonely and forbidding city
until Ebenezer’s reformation. So a couple
of parties and a funeral were supersized,
effervesced and choreographed for Scrooge.
We’re also more familiar with the older, more
entrenched Dickens tale, so tampering is
riskier, more jarring.
Recognizing that they’re primarily
dealing with schoolkids, normal ones
in fear of the notorious Herdmans, they
make sure to create their biggest scenes
when kids congregate, at church for Sunday
school, at school during lunchtime, and at
their rehearsal hall near the fateful church
kitchen. The catastrophic rehearsal scene,
causing Rev. Hopkins to cancel the pageant
after the Herdman herd has stampeded it, is
rockin’ pandemonium.
Beecham and Hiltgartner are more artful
even before that in their depiction of the
adult antagonists. What I labeled as the
four Old Biddies, when Jill Bloede directed

the play for Children’s Theatre in 1995,
are now three parents of Beth and Charlie
Bradley’s classmates. Luanne, Connie, and
Betty start us off singing “Perfect Little
Town,” as beautifully harmonized and sugary
as the overdubbing Connie Francis cooing
“My Happiness.” They are natural allies of
the dictatorial Helen Armstrong, the rigid
director who is usually in charge of the
unchanging Christmas pageant year after
year.
But Armstrong is hospitalized this year,
so the vocal trio mobilizes with Helen to
convince Grace Bradley, Beth and Charlie’s
mom, to take over just before auditions. In
the play version, all four women wielded
old-fashioned phones in cajoling Grace. A
musical allows for more fanciful, comical
liberties. By the end of another pop rocker,
“Counting on You,” the ladies have circled to
the opposite side of McColl Family Theatre
from Helen’s bedside to resume their vocal
trio assault on Grace at the Bradley home,
with the siblings and their father joining in
on the hubbub.
If the ladies can be more ridiculous now
— a big if, since Bloede had Alan Poindexter

DONNA BISE

and Sidney Horton crossdressing as two
of the hags in ‘95 — then the Herdmans
can be more fearsome and ferocious to
counterbalance them. Augmenting their
chaotic energy is the fiendish work of
choreographer Ron Chisholm, who keeps
the six Herdmans and their terrified victims
spread across the stage in frenetic action.
Even Rev. Hopkins must be convinced of
their true menace.
We are far closer here to believing
Beth’s famed opening pronouncement:
“The Herdmans were the worst kids in the
whole history of the world.” Where Bloede
capitalized a bit on the fact that rather
entertaining performances could come
from kids who might be visibly reluctant to
immerse themselves in the full barbarity of a
Herdman, current Children’s Theatre artistic
director Adam Burke will have no such laxity.
As Imogene, the Herdman who takes the
role of Virgin Mary by the throat, Carlyn
Head is an absolute she-wolf in her howling
vocals, and there is only the slightest glint of
cuteness in Charli Head as Gladys, the little
sister who pounces on the role of Herald
Angel. With all of this vocal artillery hurled

ARTS

at her from young and old, Ashley Goodson
can be sweet and caring as Grace, but when
those moments arrive for reasserting control
and conviction, she also unveils a voice of
steel.
So when the Herdmans come around
to the spirit of the Nativity, Grace is a
little more amazing than she was in the
play version, but I’m more thankful for the
fulminating comic relief from Allison Snow
Rhinehart, thwarted each time she issues a
demand or insists that the Herdmans must
be thrown out of the pageant. As phlegmatic
as Rhinehart is, Tiffany Bear as Connie,
Olivia Edge as Luanne and Tracie Frank as
Luanne are purest plastic, aging Supremes
wannabes.
Arella Flur is more than satisfying as
Beth, but she’s usually upstaged by Bennett
Harris as the bullied younger brother or
Ryann Losee as the tattletale Alice, who lets
Imogene snatch the role of Mary from her
without a struggle. Bobby Tyson’s comic
timing is so sharp in the minor role of Mr.
Bradley that it’s reassuring to see him get
a duet with wife Grace late in the show,
and Dan Brusnson is the kindliest, most
Christian Rev. Hopkins that I can recall.
Among the male Herdmans, Colin Samole
as Ralph and Rixey Terry as Leroy impressed
me the most, but I don’t think either is
written fully enough.
At least not yet. Estimates of the running
time that I’ve seen in the Children’s Theatre
press releases and in their program booklet
have ranged from 60 minutes, approximately
the length of their 1995 production, to
80 minutes in the current playbill. My

clocking of the Sunday matinee at less than
67 minutes suggests that the piece I saw
underwent feverish modifications in its final
weeks of rehearsal.
I point that out for a couple of reasons. It
illustrates that Burke and Children’s Theatre,
who commissioned this world premiere, have
taken significant ownership in intensively
shaping the product. It also suggests to
me that the process isn’t finished, that the
80-minute target that seems more sensible
to me might be what we see the next time
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever: The Musical
opens at ImaginOn. Or even by the time it
closes on December 23.
Maybe then I’ll be able to say that this
is the best Best Christmas Pageant Ever ever.
It’s pretty damn close right now — and a
very gratifying achievement at Charlotte’s
fantasy palace.

ALL THIS AND WORLD WAR, TOO
New films from Brad, Beatty, Billy Bob, and Disney
BY MATT BRUNSON

B

ETTER THAN Finding
Dory but not quite reaching
the level of Zootopia, the latest
Disney animated effort of 2016
adheres pretty much to the formula we’ve
come to expect in recent years from the
storied studio. And as usual when it comes to
the Mouse House, the formula won.
Again combining a fairly standard
morality tale with eye-popping visuals,
Disney has another hit in Moana (*** out of
four), a rollicking yarn centered on a young
lass (voiced by Auli’i Cravalho) coming of
age on a South Pacific island. Enjoying a
special rapport with the ocean, she finally
defies her overprotective father’s orders
and sets sail with the intention of finding
the Heart of Te Fiti (not to be confused
with Titanic’s Heart of the Ocean), a bauble
swiped from an island goddess by the
boisterous and self-satisfied demigod Maui
(Dwayne Johnson). Requiring the return
of the stone to save her endangered island,
she eventually crosses paths with Maui, and
the pair constantly bicker as they embark
on a series of adventures. One involves tiny

pirates who might be distant relatives of the
Minions; another focuses on a monstrous
crab who belts out a showstopper (it’s a
perfect vocal role for Tim Curry, but Flight of
the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement got the call).
Full of energetic incident, backed by a
score co-written by Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel
Miranda, and imbued with a respect for
South Pacific customs and cultures, Moana
hits all the right grace notes with such
efficiency that it’s easy to overlook the fact
that the lead is once again a plucky and
intelligent heroine who absorbs valuable
life lessons, the sidekick is once again a
garrulous and talkative overachiever, and
the comic relief is once again provided by
an animal (in this case, a brain-damaged
chicken). But why fight it when the results
are this charming? Better to just settle back
and allow the Disney magic to wash over you
like a gentle wave lapping the shore.

ONCE THE BREAD and butter of
the movie industry, the World War II film
has become a rarity in today’s Hollywood,
SEE

FILM P. 22 u

CLCLT.COM | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | 21

ARTS

FILM

Moana

FILM FROM P. 21 t
tragically going the way of the dodo and the
Western. Allied (*** out of four) attempts to
bring back some of that old-school glamor
and intrigue, placing a moving love story
at the center of a wartime espionage caper.
The result is itself a rarity: an elegant and
understated movie for adults, one that’s as
unfussy as it is engaging.
Brad Pitt, no stranger to tangling with
Nazis (starring in Inglourious Basterds and
Fury, speaking out against Donald Trump),
here plays Max Vatan, a Canadian intelligence
officer whose latest mission pairs him with
French Resistance fighter Marianne Beauséjour
(Marion Cotillard). Their assignment involves
posing as man and wife while plotting the
assassination of an important German
dignitary; perhaps inevitably, they end up
falling in love and getting married, a union
that turns problematic once Marianne is
suspected by the British high command of
being an enemy agent.
Far too many movies relying on a big
reveal play their hands too soon, but that’s
not the case with Allied: Thanks to Steven
Knight’s smart screenplay and Robert
Zemeckis’ understated direction, the picture
keeps the is-she-or-isn’t-she? guessing game
percolating until the end. Also crucial to the
story’s effectiveness are the performances by
22 | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | CLCLT.COM

DISNEY

Pitt and Cotillard, both making the mutual
attraction and admiration between their
characters palpable.
We’ll always have Casablanca, of course,
but those wanting to catch an old-fashioned
melodrama on the big screen are advised to
fall in.

WARREN BEATTY SNAGGED a
richly deserved Academy Award for directing
the unsung 1981 masterpiece Reds, but he’s
never won an Oscar for his acting. Yet for
approximately 50 years, he’s delivered a hefty
number of dazzling turns, refusing to coast
on his good looks and instead exploring
characters who were often eccentric, offbeat or
even downright psychotic. With Rules Don’t
Apply (**1/2 out of four), it’s interesting to
note that his acting remains as strong as ever
while it’s his helming abilities that seem to
have become a tad corroded over time.
Working from a script he co-wrote with
Bo Goldman, Beatty has fashioned a film
that often seems as schizophrenic as its key
character, the towering figure of Howard
Hughes. As played by Beatty himself, the
billionaire is an omniscient presence, even
when the story focuses more on the budding
relationship between two of his employees.
Folks who toil under Hughes aren’t allowed
to date any of his contract actresses, which
means chauffeur Frank Forbes (Alden

Marion Cotillard and Brad Pitt in Allied.

Ehrenreich) and starlet Marla Mabrey (Lily
Collins) have to keep their flirtatious parrying
on the down low.
Viewers who can get on the film’s
wavelength — and who aren’t looking for
something as meaty as Martin Scorsese’s
Hughes biopic The Aviator — will find (as I
did) much to enjoy, but there’s no denying
the picture is slight in the extreme, with most
of its particulars dissipating from memory
rather rapidly. Still, it’s been 15 years since
Beatty participated in any movie (headlining
the woeful Town & Country), and it’s nice to
see the maverick filmmaker still in the game,
even if he’s no longer the one writing the
rules.

THE 2003 YULETIDE hit Bad Santa
remains one of those holiday movies, like It’s
a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story, that’s
impossible not to watch over and over (and
over) again. Bad Santa 2 (**1/2 out of four)
is basically like a copy that’s been produced
on a faulty Xerox machine: Some parts have
been duplicated perfectly, while other bits are
blurry or missing completely. So while the foul
language, misanthropic attitude, and cynical
performances still come into focus in this
belated sequel, even squinting might not pick
up much in the way of clever plotting, genuine
wit, and a sneaky subversive streak running
throughout.

PARAMOUNT

Yet the attention to cheerful vulgarity
defines both movies, meaning that plenty
of laughs can be found in this flagrantly
foulmouthed follow-up. Granted, audiences
may not respect themselves in the morning —
heck, they may not even respect themselves
during the movie (at my screening, many
people lambasted the film on the way out,
but, boy, were they sure howling during it!)
— but those looking for seasonal fare that’s
decidedly more naughty than nice will be
properly rewarded.
As before, the key ingredient is the giveand-take between Billy Bob Thornton and
Tony Cox as those holiday hoodlums Willie and
Marcus — both actors pick up where they left
off, as their antagonistic characters this time
become involved in a heist brought together
by Willie’s equally disreputable mom (Kathy
Bates). Pudgy Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly)
returns to again scamper after Willie, and
he’s as dim-witted as ever. Thurman is rather
awkwardly shoehorned into the proceedings,
sandwiched between the copious cussing and
the copious copulation. Nevertheless, his
presence is welcome, if only to see how he
looks 13 years removed from the original film
— and to see if he still puts his faith in Mary
and Jesus and that talking walnut.

BOOK REVIEW

ARTS

WHEN ONE
DOOR CLOSES...
Julie Funderburk opens
up about her debut book
of poetry
BY CORBIE HILL

T

HERE

ARE

MANY

houses on the pages of Julie
Funderburk’s debut book of poetry,
The Door that Always Opens. You won’t find
them around Charlotte, though: the poet’s
childhood and family homes have been, one
way or another, demolished to make way for
new construction.
“It’s kind of strange to live in a city
where you’ve had a number of dwellings, and
they’re all destroyed,” she says.
The basic facts of the houses in her
debut book of poetry are true. One was a
small dairy farm; in “Future Site of Fletcher
Academy,” Funderburk walks the bulldozed
land where it once stood. There were
some rental houses and an apartment she
lived in, all gone now, but all presented
poetically in The Door that Always Opens. Yet
autobiography isn’t Funderburk’s goal — in
fact, that’s not even how she views these
poems. The fact of these houses is more
of a mechanism used to explore the things
that separate people and that draw them
together. On December 6, Funderburk reads
from The Door that Always Opens at Queens
College’s Duke Energy Auditorium.
To her, poetry is a fictive art; some things
she amplifies, others she simplifies, and
all for narrative’s sake. She may be writing
about a house her family lived in while her
dad was still working on it, say, but it’s not
really about her.
And she’s still coming to terms with what
it means to have shared some of these details
in her work.
“I think a lot of writers have something
about their lives that prompts them to want
to write, something that happens that makes
them see themselves in light of the rest
of the world, so there’s a little bit of a
difference or a gap,” Funderburk says. “It can
be any number of things. For some people
it’s trauma, but it’s not always that. I guess
this unusual aspect of my personal history
is one of the things that separated me from
other people.”

Julie Funderburk will read from her new
book on Dec. 6 at Queen’s University.
She never thought she would write
poems about the houses she’s lived in. That
seems like the kind of thing that would
go in a memoir, Funderburk says, and
she’s not all that interested in that kind
of writing. She was surprised, then, when
she started writing a series of poems about
her family’s homes. In “The Undertaking,”
she paints a picture of a father who spends
his entire adult life building a house, while
in “Singular Summer” she describes living
in an unfinished house with her family.
“We had no certificate of occupancy and kept
clothes in bags. / Reason wasn’t helping, so I
shut up about it,” she writes. They snaked
an extension cord in, as the poem goes, and
blocked the windows with plywood at night
so no light would reveal their presence.
“It was a real house in Charlotte,” she
says, admitting it feels weird to switch gears
and discuss the actual house rather than
its poetic equivalent. All families, as she
understands it, have things they don’t share
with other people. These aren’t necessarily
dark or sinister secrets, she explains, but
can simply be eccentricities. This unwritten
code fascinates her, even as she toes it in
The Door that Always Opens. Funderburk’s
own work is underlain with elements of her
own family: her late father, who died when
she was in her early 20s; the string of nowdemolished houses; her twin brother, who
appears in the satisfying and concise “Trying
to Light Charcoal in a Coastal Night Wind.”
Having a twin, too, gave Funderburk
early insight into the culture of the gender
binary. Growing up, she saw how the world
treated them differently: for one, he had all
the good toys; to this day, Funderburk’s not
sure what’s supposed to be fun about giving
a doll a bottle. In school, she remembers
boys and girls were forever being separated.
In kindergarten, she was confused when she
and her twin had to sit at different tables

The cover of Julie Funderburk’s The Door that Always Opens.
for their birthday party — she at the girls’
table with pink cupcakes, and he at the boys’
one with chocolate ones. They were best
friends, and it didn’t make sense to celebrate
separately.
“To me, he was pretty much the same
as me, and that’s not how everybody else
saw us,” she says. These early lessons made
her more confident in thinking about the
idea of an extreme gender binary and the
way it effects people. In the churning,
staccato “Notes for Surviving Girlhood,” she
addresses some of these pressures. “No one
can uproot your nerve,” she writes.

Fiction writers are taught to borrow
liberally from reality, Funderburk points
out. She understands, too, that real life is
stranger than fiction, so when she sits down
to write poems she does much of the same
thing. She takes license with some of the
details, but the basic facts — the stuff you
just can’t make up, as they say — are true.
“The autobiography isn’t the important
part for me,” Funderburk says. “The way the
story can be shared with others and why it
might ought to be is what interests me.”
BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM
CLCLT.COM | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | 23

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GETTING MERRY WITH THE MUMMIES
Members of Here Come The Mummies talk music, muses and mummy mishaps
BY ANITA OVERCASH

W

HEN IT COMES to
alter-egos, the folks who
make up Here Come The
Mummies, a funk rock group performing at
Neighborhood Theatre, have it all down pat.
They perform dressed as mummies onstage
— the costumed visuals akin to groups like
Gwar and Mac Sabbath. The band also uses
28 | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | CLCLT.COM

discretion towards revealing their real life
identities. Hence, this interview’s weirdness.
Since the band’s start in 2000, members
have come and gone without their true
identities being unraveled. Why is it all kept
“under wraps”? The band’s website states
that it’s due to possible record label contract
disputes. Most of the musicians also perform
in other bands. Creative Loafing snagged an
interview with Here Come The Mummies’

Mummy Cass and Midnight, who talked
music, muses and mummy mishaps as their
undead alter egos.
Creative Loafing: Who has been in the
band the longest, and are you surprised
by the longevity of this music project?
Mummy Cass: We are all ancient, so
certain details get lost in the mist, y’know?
But we were a band of mortal men before the

Pharaoh cursed us. Now we wonder the earth
in search of the perfect riff. Then we are
supposed to finally be able to rest our souls!
Midnight: I don’t really wanna rest my
soul. I’m kinda diggin’ the 21st century.
Mummy Cass: He has a point.
How do you describe the band’s
sound?
Mummy Cass: It’s funk and rock and

soul and a dash of other styles to keep it
interesting, like that little bit of rot you taste
in a perfect strawberry.
Are there other bands that have
influenced the band’s sound and style?
Mummy Cass: The biggest influences on
our sound would be closer to Otis Redding,
Stevie Wonder, Parliament, Sly and the
Family Stone, The Isleys, and lots of others.
But the thing is, when you imitate others, it
still comes out sounding different, like your
own thing.
What’s the hardest thing about
performing in mummy gear?
Mummy Cass: Well, our dusty, decrepit,
rotten limbs sometimes won’t cooperate.
And we’ve been wrapped up tight for aeons.
These rags have “baked in” over the centuries,
and we’d be hard pressed to say where they
end and semi-preserved flesh begins.
Midnight: That, and the better portion
of our brains were removed through our
noses back in the day. Good thing we all
started off above average. Well, everyone
except Spaz.
Have you ever had anything crazy
happen or has anything ever gone wrong
while your were onstage in your mummy
gear?
Mummy Cass: I lost 7/8 of my tongue
while playing guitar with my teeth (good
thing I started off above average). High
E-string sheered it right off. A little, fleshy,

pulsating gift to the second row.
Best reason to perform as a mummy?
Mummy Cass: One thing remains the
same no matter how much time may pass.
Chicks dig music. And Mummies. That’s
three things.
Did you guys have a specific
inspiration for this project?
Mummy Cass: We’ve got nothing but
inspiration. We’ve been doing this so long,
you think we’d be bored by now, but because
we are all overgrown kids inside, we find
inspiration all around us, all the time. We
breath the stuff.
The new album is Underground.
Thematically, how did you find
inspiration for the album?
Mummy Cass: That’s right, Underground
came out August 1st, and we are really
proud of it, but we already have a new,
new album, A Blessing and a Curse and it
came out awesome, too. See what we mean?
Inspiration finds us.

How many people are currently in
the band and what stage names do they
go by? What instruments do they play?
Mummy Cass: Usually, there are eight
of us, and there are a few auxiliary mums
for when somebody loses a finger and has
to hand stitch it back on, or when K.W. TuT
simply cannot be roused from the catacombs
after a tiring motorcycle journey. Most
nights you’ll see Eddie Mummy on drums,
Spaz on keys, myself on guitar and lead
vocals, TuT or The Pole on bass, Ra on tenor,
The Flu on alto, and Midnight on percussion,
keys, talk box, and Bari. It is a big sound, big
sound.
Are there any new techniques or
instruments that you’ve added to the
set?
Mummy Cass: Midnight’s talk box is
probably the most fun new sound. And his
hat, lovingly hand-made by our faithful
sound man Jonee Quest, is the best new
accessory.
Have you guys played Charlotte
before? Any fond memories?
Mummy Cass: Yes, and we love it. The
Neighborhood Theatre has been great!
Thanks for helping us get the word out that
Charlotte needs to come get its booster
injection of Original Undead Funk!

a priority for songstress Elise
Davis.
The Little Rock, Arkansas, native grew
up believing she’d follow in the footsteps
of the women around her — marrying at a
young age and having children — but she’s
done quite the opposite.
For Davis — who plays with Black
Lillies and Radio Birds on Dec. 1 at Visulite
Theatre — her commitment is to music, not
matrimony or offspring. At 28, she’s released
several independent albums but her most
recent album, The Token, is her debut on the
Thirty Tigers label.
The first song on the album is the
namesake, “The Token,” and it sets the tone
of the record.
“I titled the record The Token and made it
the first song because I feel like that song is
sort of the mission statement for the whole
record, which is basically whichever path
you choose there’s always going to be good
and bad. That’s just life,” says Davis. “And all
the songs to follow are little snippets of my
experiences as I am trying to decipher what
my life will look like in that way.”
While she addresses the inherent
pressures of a woman living in the South,
she also speaks freely about sexuality and
substance abuse. Tracks like “I Go To Bars
And Get Drunk” and “Benefits” speak on
alternative lifestyles and views. On “Benefits”
specifically, she makes a bold statement
about the rewards of having friends with
benefits.
“Sexuality, in particular, you’re often
made to feel guilty about. In the South, as a
woman I feel like if you’re really open about
your sexuality it’s often tied in with being
slutty. That’s something that the older I
get has made me realize how sex-negative
America is,” says Davis. “I wanted to speak on
sexuality and substance abuse. It’s definitely
a little uncommon to sing that one in front
30 | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | CLCLT.COM

GREGG ROTH

of my granddad, but there wasn’t anything
that was going to stop me from putting that
on there.”
Other songs, like “Penny,” take a sensual
approach to sexual escapades without the
intent of relationship development. Davis
sings of freedom, as have other singer/
songwriters — Lana Del Rey springing to
mind. The no-strings-attached attitude is
refreshing, lending to the song’s sexy twang.
Davis describes her music as “not straight
up country,” fitting best in the Americana
genre. Her songs — personal, honest and
vulnerable at times — are a direct reflection
of her life. “Hotel Room,” one of the more
vulnerable tracks on the album is about a
bad relationship she was in. “Make the Kill”
is another breakup song that was influenced
after a move from Little Rock to Nashville,
Tenn., where she’s lived for the past five
years.
It was in Nashville that Davis started
work at a publishing company. She later
entered a “Pub Deal Contest,” presented by
Martin Guitar and American Songwriter and
won a year-long $20,000 publishing contract
with HoriPro Entertainment Group.
After that, she pushed to release her
debut album with a label. Her manager
connected her to producer Sam Kassirer

(Josh Ritter, Lake Street Dive, Erin
McKeown, Langhorne Slim, and more), who
arranged for the album’s recording musicians
— including guitarist Josh Kaufman (Bob
Weir, Day of the Dead collaborator with
Aaron and Brice Dessner of The National),
bassist Bradley Cool (Indigo Girls, Shannon
Van Etten), drummer Matt McCaughan (Bon
Iver, Hiss Golden Messenger). They all met
to record the album in a secluded winter
cabin in Maine where they were shacked up
for 11 days.
This was a long time coming for Davis,
who recorded her first song — inspired by
running away after her parents refused to let
her attend a Bush concert — at just 12 years
old. “It was a song about feeling alone in a

GREGG ROTH

big house,” says Davis, who returned home
from running away only to discover that her
parents hadn’t even noticed she was missing.
Much like those days, Davis still uses
loneliness as a muse for her songs. The
Token’s “Not the End of the World” is a sad
tour song, written after one of her solo
outings. But at the end of the day, Davis is
happy about where she’s at, despite touring’s
effect on her relationship status.
“I’ve had trouble with [relationships] as
you can probably tell. People will get jealous
and it’s easy to lose touch. It’s definitely hard
to maintain relationships doing what I do,”
says Davis.
While on the road, she often hears from
friends who are eager to announce their
engagements. The song “Diamond Days,”
was inspired by her being asked to be a
bridesmaid.
“I was super hungover with my hair in
a greasy ponytail in the backseat of a van
driving back from a Houston show,” says
Davis. “I started to write that on a napkin
in my lap.” The result is a song about feeling
alone, yet content, and alive on the road.
The chorus echoes: “I chose to take my
time. She chose to take his name.” She’s ok with
being a bridesmaid, though.

com. CL online provides addresses, maps and directions from your
location. Send us your concert listings: E-mail us at aovercash@clclt.
com or fax it to 704-522-8088. We need the date, venue, band name
and contact name and number. The deadline is each Wednesday, one
week before publication.
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DON’T LAND ON THE NAUGHTY
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What to do (or not to do) at your holiday office party

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The Perfect Combo.

year ago, I could tell he still wasn’t judging
ARE YOU UP to your ears in
me, however, I was definitely judging
Thanksgiving leftovers? I know I am. But,
myself. Scout’s honor, this year is going to
believe it or not, I’m actually not a huge fan of
be different.
turkey, stuffing and the likes. Nevertheless,
Not sure whether or not you know how
after an extended weekend at home with the
family that featured a mannequin challenge,
to behave at your company’s party? Below
moonshine and a Salisbury trip on the Polar
are a few things that are guaranteed to land
Express — in no particular order — I’m
you on the naughty list with your boss and
happy that it’s officially time to put up
other higher-ups:
Christmas decorations.
1. Getting sloppy drunk. Take a few
No lie, I had a panic attack as a result of
notes from me. No one wants to be the
overexertion and overexcitement following
weepy, vommy, mouthy co-worker that’s
Christmas shopping at Hobby Lobby on
purging at the office party. Most likely there
Saturday. Who am I?
will be some sort of open bar, so prepare
This year, instead of hunting for the
yourself. Eat the hors d’oeuvres, stick with
best clothing deals on Black Friday and
what you know and if they’re only paying for
Cyber Monday, I spent close to $200 on
beer, wine and champagne, save hard
Christmas plates and decorations.
liquor for the after party.
I never thought I’d be a Suzy
2. Insulting the higherHomemaker. But can you
ups. Make sure you’re
blame me? Anthropologie’s
aware of the head honchos
visual marketing gets me
that are going to be in
every time.
attendance at your office
On Sunday, while my
party. Greet them early
boy toy snoozed away
and once you’ve had your
his hangover, I decided
fair share, avoid them at
to get in the Christmas
all costs. Then you won’t
spirit. I put on Krampus
have to try and remember
and started pulling out all
AERIN SPRUILL
what you may have said
of the Christmas decorations
walking into the office Monday
I already had. Two trees, hand
towels and table settings later, I
morning, like I did.
was coming down off my Christmas
3. Dwelling on work. Don’t like your
high.
job? Hate one of your co-workers? Frustrated
Just when I was seriously considering
from a call earlier that day? Leave those
going to grab another tree, I realized my
topics at the door. The moment alcohol
holiday office party at Suite was just a few
touches your lips, you’ll want to vent and
days away. Nothing like a good old-fashioned
you may end up sticking your foot in your
party to get me back in the spirit. But then,
mouth. The motto to remember: “If you
just as quick as my excitement returned, the
don’t have anything good to say, don’t say
ghosts of Christmas parties past paid me a
anything at all.”
visit.
4. Wearing skimpy clothes. As if you
One year, I got caught double-fisting
haven’t already made a name for yourself in
by the president of our company. That was
the office for your risqué clothing choice, the
before I became a guilty party in a glassoffice party does not give you a good excuse
shattering incident. And before getting a ride
to stretch your legs — pun intended. Don’t
to All American Pub from a police officer,
let the venue choice of a local bar or club
where I’m pretty sure I was canoodling all
fool you. That mini skirt wasn’t appropriate
night in front of another higher-up.
then, and it isn’t appropriate now. I repeat,
The following year, I’d hoped to show
save it for the after party.
major improvements. Nope. I ended up
Before you turn your annual office
getting drunk once again and this time, I
holiday party into The Nightmare Before
was overheard making questionably lewd
Christmas, think twice. After all, Santa (aka
comments in front of my current boss
your boss) knows when you’ve been bad or
who ever so gently reminded me of our
good, so be good for goodness sake!
anniversary last week, “Are you going to
What’s your favorite or most embarrassing
be on your best behavior for the Christmas
memory from an office party past? Share it with
party this year?”
Even after our awkward interaction a
me at backtalk@clclt.com.

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36 | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | CLCLT.COM

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MY BOYFRIEND OF almost two
years is wonderful, and we have had
very few issues. But there is one thing
that has almost been a deal breaker. He
fiddles with his penis almost constantly
— in front of me and in front of our
roommates. I’ve confronted him about
it a number of times. He said he should
be able to fiddle with his dick in every
room of the house if he wants to and
he should feel comfortable doing so. I
told him that he is being “comfortable”
at the expense of the comfort of those
around him. We’ve had a number of
confrontations about this, and he does
it a lot less, but he still does
it. If he doesn’t stop when
I tell him to, I just leave
the room. My question
to you: Is this behavior
unacceptable or am I
being unreasonable?
Frustrated With
The Fiddling

I am a queer trans woman in my
mid-20s, and I am in a monogamous
relationship with a queer cis woman.
We have been dating for about three
months now. We have had an absolutely
amazing sex life since day one, except for
one caveat: She has never in her life had
an orgasm. For most of the time she
has been sexually active, she
has felt ambivalent about
getting off. It has only been
in the past month that
she has started feeling
a “sexual awakening,”
as she calls it. We have
been making progress,
but she has been having
issues with getting
Until a few weeks
caught up in her head
ago, I would have said
when I am pleasuring
DAN SAVAGE
that
neo-Nazis
siegher. This has been causing
heiling around Washington,
dysphoric feelings for her.
DC, was unacceptable and any
We have had a few discussions
elected official or pundit who didn’t
about what we can do about the
immediately condemn neo-Nazis would be
situation, but we are feeling lost. We
finished politically and professionally. But
know there isn’t going to be a quick fix,
it turns out that neo-Nazism is just another
but what do we do about this?
example of IOIYAR — “it’s okay if you’re a
Confused And Nervous Truly Can’t
Republican” — and relativism reigns.
Overcome Much Exasperation
In other words: “Unacceptable” is a
relative concept, FWTF, not an objective one.
Pot.
That said, FWTF, I don’t think you’re
being unreasonable: Fiddling with your dick
I’ve been in a long-term relationship
in every room of the house is inconsiderate
with the girl I’m going to marry. While
and childish. It sounds like you’re doing a
I’ve had a few relationships in the past,
good job of socializing your boyfriend and I
she has had only one other relationship
would encourage you to keep it up.
before me, who also happened to be
her only other sexual companion. My
I’m a straight man in a mostly
girlfriend is very vanilla in the bedroom,
healthy marriage. Our sex life is
which is fine for me, but the issue is
average, which I understand is better
that currently the only way for her to
than some people can hope for, and
have an orgasm is to grind (dry hump)
we communicate well. For example, I
on my boxer shorts until she climaxes.
felt comfortable admitting to my wife
This obviously causes her a little bit of
a few weeks ago that I would like more
embarrassment, along with some heavy
blowjobs. She in turn felt comfortable
rug burn. Is there any toy or something
admitting to me that she would prefer
that may help with this?
if I showered more often. So we made
Girlfriend Dryly Humping
a deal: I would shower every day and
she would blow me twice a month. But
Pot and sex toys — they might not help,
the first month came and went with no
but they couldn’t hurt.
blowjobs in sight. I’ve showered every
Email Dan Savage at mail@savagelove.net.
single day. Should I bring this up to her?

CLCLT.COM | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | 37

LILLY SPA

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SOLUTION TO THIS WEEK'S PUZZLE

FOR ALL SIGNS: This is the quietest
week we have experienced in the last couple
of months. It is a time for tending to our
routines and preparing for whichever holiday
you celebrate at the end of December. You
need to know that Mercury turns retrograde
on December 19. We are in the “foreshadow”
at this time as the planet appears to
decelerate ahead of changing directions.
Projects begun now will require longer
time to complete, even though we aren’t
quite in the retrograde zone. The Mercury
retrograde will extend through the holidays
until January 8.
ARIES: Mars, your avatar in the zodiac,

is making several favorable aspects with
other planets. It is favoring your primary
relationship(s), bringing a free flowing
understanding between you and others.
You are also generating forward progress
with a plan for expanding your work via
an electronic solution. You will be taking
something old and turning it into a new
creation.

TAURUS: This might be a week in which

you let yourself give into chocolate bonbons
and other yummy things. Self-discipline is
not at its best. Travel ideas are especially
appealing. Your partner or a good friend may
be the one who provokes temptations, but
you are easily led right now.

GEMINI: Your attention shifts to matters

of shared resources for the next couple of
weeks. “Resources” include time, things of
material value, energy and sexuality. The
territory is wide, ranging from the mundane
study of the budget all the way to important
discussions with partners over the need for
greater intimacy.

CANCER: A changing social situation or a

particular friend wanders across your radar
this week. You are left with a lot to think
about as a result. Your feathers may be
ruffled a bit, but this is no major deal. Stay
in communication with your partner. The
role of woman as Lover versus woman as
Caretaker may be mildly challenging now.

LEO: You may be surprised to discover
something about yourself or your money/
debts that you have been avoiding. We are
all in denial sometimes. Don’t waste time
on a guilt trip. Now that you know, it is time
to face the facts and collect the threads of
a solution. This is not a good time to have
a sexual encounter with someone unknown
to you.

VIRGO: Mercury, your ruling planet, moves

into the sector of life related to children,
recreation, personal creativity, and romance.
Your attention will be focused in these areas
beyond the end of this year. You can expect
changes, shifts of gear, and surprises in these

territories. Something new is developing in
these areas, but it may not become apparent
until later in January.

LIBRA: The practical things of life seem to
stand front and center between you and a
pleasurable week. You may be working on
a project with a lot of details that requires
your full attention in order to be accurate.
You and a significant other may need to have
a clear discussion about your expectations of
one another.

SCORPIO: Your faith will be renewed this
week. Your guardian is watching over you.
Someone in the background offers help. Your
available resources are expanded and you
have fresh, interesting work. The gods are
with you now.

SAGITTARIUS:

You are gathering
information that will help you launch future
plans. It is possible that others are helping
— a sibling, a roommate, or a friend. It is
possible that your research may carry you
off into a short trip. It is important, while
Mercury is preparing to turn retrograde, that
you double check everything now.

CAPRICORN: Mercury travels slowly
through your sign between now and
February 6. It will be going through its
retrograde cycle before it moves along. Take
care with any decision of importance because
you likely will find reason to change your
mind. New information keeps popping up
to muddy the works. This is normal with
Mercury retrogrades. Do not beat yourself
because you can’t seem to move forward.

AQUARIUS: The planetary energies are on
a roll for you, Aquarius. Mars, the Warrior,
in your sign is helping you to tackle more
than one project with determined vigor.
Even if you need resources, they will come to
you without strain or fuss. Your persuasive
power is strong and other will listen to you
now.

PISCES: Developments in your career or life
direction may cause you to feel ineffective
this week. Don’t allow this one experience
to alter your sense of self-identity. You are
an intuitive person who can almost always
assist others to feel better. But you cannot
accomplish this goal if the Other does not
want to feel better.

Are you interested in a personal horoscope? Vivian
Carol may be reached at 704-366-3777 for private
psychotherapy or astrology appointments. Website:
www.horoscopesbyvivian.com.

CLCLT.COM | DEC. 1 - DEC. 7, 2016 | 39

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